U.S. Counter-Terrorism Apparatus is used to Quell Dissent among Americans

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the federal government organized “fusion centers” so that local and state police could communicate and share information with Washington in an effort to thwart future terrorist plots. But a new study says this unprecedented coordination of law enforcement has resulted in police spying on demonstrators and creating a chilling effect on dissent.

Produced by the DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy, the report discusses numerous instances in which fusion centers monitored Occupy Wall Street activists across the country.

“Heavily-funded municipal, county, state and federal ‘counter-terrorism’ agencies (often acting in concert through state/regional ‘fusion centers’) view citizens engaged in movements of political and social dissent, such as Occupy Wall Street, as nothing less than nascent, if not bona fide, ‘terrorist’ threats,” the report reads.

The authors of the year-long study also say the “monitoring” and “suppression” of activists and dissident groups was often carried out “on behalf of, and in cooperation with, some of the nation’s largest financial and corporate interests—the very entities that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and others oppose as usurpers of American democracy.”